The hot strip mill II of thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG Duisburg produces enormous calibres: The pipe strap grades, also called X-grade steel, are mainly used in the construction of oil and gas pipelines. To meet the extremely high requirements, the pipe strap grades undergo an equally extreme production process where they are heated to over 1,000 degrees Celsius among other things. Then they are wound to coils of about 36 tonnes.

These coils must be adequately strapped. However, conventional and existing strapping solutions quickly reach their limits, also due to the enormous expansion forces. It would theoretically be possible to apply out several strappings with conventional steel strap or use a significantly wider steel strap with more weld spots. However, these options were not at issue due to a lack of practicability.

Our engineers did not give up and finally developed a solution consisting of two elements. The first was to increase the strap thickness. The result: SUPER MEGA strap in the dimensions 32 x 1.45 mm was born. So far, however, no strapping head existed that was suitable for processing strap of this dimension. Therefore, the experts at TITAN developed the VS32-L-SM at the same time, a head that is especially suitable for SUPER MEGA strap.

After extensive tests and trials, the system solution was implemented in Duisburg and showed that the effort had paid off. The system can process all steel strap grades without loss of time. Another benefit is that the customer does not have to replace existing machinery such as unwinders, forklifts or coilers.

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